Basically a non-artist formerly known as merely a conceited dude, had the walls between his "knowledge" of his greatness and the perceived reflections of it from outside (e.g. from movies and others' glam lives) collide. Collision fueled by a rage at everyone else's lack of acknowledgement of his greatness.
madaxe_again's summation is on track. But I don't believe coke was necessarily involved - some people just have higher and growing concentrations of asshole within them.
Ah, that mostly matches the general "feel" I got from what you said, without entirely following your expressions.
As a side, I'll note that while densely chained and encapsulated metaphors, allusions and references to esoteric portions of popular culture can be fun to communicate in, and can be effective when used with a specific audience, but when used to communicate with a wider audience often ends up being substandard in the communication department. E.g. Poems are great for communicating complex emotions and feeling to someone interesting in reading poetry, but aren't the natural medium for communicating on most subjects.
Although it's entirely possible I'm too sensitive to this.
You are too sensitive to this. Consider that sometimes, one engages in tightly layered banter, knowing that only some people will read through all layers. Which is fine because at minimum, the main sentiment (in this case, "this person's off the rails") is conveyed.
So, in this particular instance of individual expression of a common sentiment, universal and uniform reception of message is not crucial. Otherwise, rest assured, I'm well aware of the importance of clear communication.
But this is a discussion forum. There's plenty of places to go to on the internet to express yourself if you want tightly layered banter, such as reddit (which is not meant to denigrate reddit, it's comments just service a slightly different purpose in many cases). Clear communication of a point that furthers that discussion is sort of the point of HN comments, and what makes them a little different (hopefully).
If I had been able to parse your comment enough to be sure it was just an overly verbose joke at his expense along with a disparagement of anyone that's happened to partner with him, I would have just downvoted you and been done with it, as the comment's not really in good taste, but more importantly it doesn't really contribute anything. That's not really meant to be an insult, we all go off-topic at times. You just happened to do it in a way that kept me from even determining whether you really were contributing anything.
Discussion can certainly proceed without knowing every last bit of nuance of my commentary because my key point is clear: the guy's off the rails and his business partners apparently tolerated this as long as he was making them money.
Naturally, you're entitled to your opinion of it, which differs from mine. Hence, we agree to disagree.
> Discussion can certainly proceed without knowing every last bit of nuance of my commentary because my key point is clear
No, your key point wasn't clear, at least not to me. It was so unclear, except for what I assumed based on some general feel and what you were replying to, that I actually stopped and asked you what you were trying to say.
madaxe_again's summation is on track. But I don't believe coke was necessarily involved - some people just have higher and growing concentrations of asshole within them.